


What are you doing up there Jehan

by Gummy_Machetes



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Crack, Humor, M/M, Ridiculous, poetry smash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:14:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23946772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gummy_Machetes/pseuds/Gummy_Machetes
Summary: Bahorel finds Jehan dangling off a roof.
Relationships: Bahorel/Jean Prouvaire
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	What are you doing up there Jehan

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy :)

Honestly, a man dangling precariously off the roof of Bahorel’s tenement building was not what he expected to see when he returned at midnight.  
Rubbing his eyes, Bahorel moved closer into the lamplight for a good look. A young man, he was, with one hand clasping onto the eaves of the roof for dear life and the other flailing around in a pathetic attempt to regain his balance. Both of his legs were kicking in a desperate struggle in the air, and Bahorel noticed that, instead of tying his bootlaces as normal, he had them twined around his calves in a sort of crisscrossed pattern, like a ballerina.  
Bahorel would have snickered in amusement if the situation wasn’t so dire. He only knew one man who tied his shoes that way, or let his sandy ginger hair fly all over his face in those whimsy shoulder-length flutters.  
“Jean Prouvaire, what in the name of paradise are you doing up there?”  
Jehan ceased his struggle for a moment to steal a look over his shoulder at Bahorel, who now threw his arms out under him, ready to catch him should he fall.  
“Ah, so it is you, my friend.” He gasped with effort as he attempted to twist himself around. “You have come just in time to witness my untimely demise.”  
“How did you end up there?” Ignoring Jehan’s decidedly macabre remark, Bahorel shouted up as loudly as he dared, which was probably sufficient to wake a light sleeper.  
“I will explain at a fairer time.” Jehan groaned a little as his hand slipped another inch. “Let us just say, for the time being, that my story involves a pianoforte, gendarmes, a rooftop chase and me falling off the roof.” His voice broke into a dreamy silence, until snapped back to reality again and added, with a tone of urgency, “Gendarmes who shall catch up with me soon.”  
“You’ve got to get down.” Bahorel wrung his hands. “God in heaven! What’ve you been up to?”  
“I assure you, my intents were noble.” Jehan told him, which was not very assuring at all. “Could you catch me if I let go?”  
“You’re on the fourth floor, Jehan! You’ll kill both of us.” Bahorel protested, but still with his arms outstretched. “Try to get to the windowsill on your side.”  
Jehan sighed, braced himself and swung gallantly to the left at the space below him, which was, quite unfortunately, one of the blind spots at his angle. “ON YOUR RIGHT!” Bahorel hollered in dismay.  
A soft cry escaped Jehan as he swung back, just in time, with his remaining momentum. But the tips of his hideous boots still shied inches away from the window ledge. Grunting with effort, he kicked his left foot against the wall on the far left, propelling himself for another swing. It didn’t bring him much closer than the first.  
“I can’t.” he moaned. “And my arm is near to breaking.”  
“TRY HARDER!” Bahorel roared, and a window slammed open behind him, revealing an old woman in a nightcap. She looked pretty much ready to let fly at us, Bahorel thought, until she took a glance at the awkward situation, shrugged and prudently slammed her window shut again.  
“The issue is not the distance of my swing, my worthy Bahorel.” Panted Jehan. “It is my height.”  
That was true. Jehan was embarrasingly waifish for a man of twenty-three. Despite this fact, the rain gutter he was hanging on gave a loud, ominous creek, and Jehan could have sworn that he felt it dipping down an inch.  
Now, if Combeferre had been with them, he would have advised Jehan to hold on with both of his hands to reduce the pressure exerted by his weight on the eaves. However, he was not there, and neither Jehan nor Bahorel were men of science.  
“Alright. What if I went upstairs to that room? I’d reach out as far as I can from the window and catch you when you swing over.”  
“Are you entitled to enter that room?”  
“Well… no.” Bahorel ruffled his hair. “An old washerwoman lives there. But I can knock and-”  
He was interrupted by a whimper on Jehan’s part.  
“Are you hurt?” Bahorel’s eyes widened in terror.  
“No.” Jehan replied, with the strangled silence of a person who dares not to breathe. “There’s a cat up here.”  
And there was. From Jehan’s treacherous angle, he could see in the dark the eyes of what looks like a small kitten, the colour of its fur cloaked by the night, peering over the edge of the rain gutter as it paced silently along, closer and closer to his sore hand.  
“Is that a joke?”  
“Why should I jest about this?” Jehan’s voice broke into a kind of panic new to Bahorel. “A kitten walks on the eaves. I fear that it will not hold.”  
“What!?”  
Still dangling by an increasingly clammy hand, Jehan squeezed his eyes shut despairingly as he muttered a prayer.  
The kitten halted with an uncertain little pad just before it reached the section of piping Jehan had his pale knuckles closed around.  
“Oh, sweet Tyche.” Jehan moaned as he pressed his free hand to his throbbing chest.  
“How is it up there?” Bahorel shouted.  
“Safe.” Jehan replied, still swaying uneasily. “For now. I suppose it couldn’t hurt if you went up to… ARRRGH!”  
“JEAN!” Bahorel almost jumped out of his skin. Every muscle in Jehan’s body seemed oddly stiff, but the eaves were creaking worse than ever, and seemed to droop with every movement.  
“IT’S SLAPPING MY HAND.” Jehan whined through clenched teeth, “BY ZEUS, IT’S SCRATCHING MY FINGERS! I’M SLIPPING-”  
He had barely finished when the kitten leapt onto the back of his hand with a decisive little pounce, and the piping broke off with a sharp crack.  
“NOOOO!!!” Bahorel flung himself forward with his arms outstretched despite what he said before about the fall going to kill both of them. Jehan’s terrified hollering and the kitten’s yowling blended into one indistinguishable screech as both of them plummeted from the fourth floor.  
And before he knew it, Jehan had flung himself forward, landing hard onto a windowsill on the first floor. In the process of doing so he knocked over a flowerpot which missed Bahorel by an inch and shattered by his feet.  
“You’re fine!” Bahorel couldn’t help breaking into a grin. “I never knew you were an acrobat.”  
Jehan whimpered. He fell to his knees on his perch, pressing himself against the wooden window panes. The kitten broke into a fit of mewling, scurrying up Jehan’s arm into his collar like a squirrel.  
“Barely.” Jehan threw away the bit of piping that came off in his hands and dusted himself over. “I would perhaps feel finer if I am not stranded on a window ledge over the pavement.” He turned gingerly, with his back to Bahorel, to glance at his surroundings, wincing as pain shot through his kneecaps.  
“Let’s see here.” Bahorel flicked at the side of his jaw. “Try getting to the other windowsill. That way you can slide down that gutter pipe over the side of the building.”  
Jehan groaned as he attempted to get to his feet, but collapsed again. “I’m done for, my friend. I have strained my knee in the fall.”  
“OH, JEAN, I SWEAR-” Bahorel barked.  
At that moment, an old man in a nightcap, hearing Bahorel’s outburst, had flung his window shutters open to shout at the impudent young man. Unfortunately, his first-floor window happened to be the very same one Jean Prouvaire was perched outside of, and before he could open his mouth, he was greeted with the extremely unsettling sight of a youth falling backwards from his window ledge, having been knocked over by his shutters.  
Not wanting to be accused of manslaughter, he prudently slammed his window shut.

Bahorel yelped as Jehan tumbled backwards from the first floor, yowling, his hair trailing into his face in its ginger splendor as he fell into the circle of light from the gas lamp. And before Bahorel could react, Prouvaire plunged squarely into his outstretched arms. Caught in surprise, the burly man staggered backwards, nearly dropping Jehan in shock.  
“Jeez.” He grunted, steadying his feet. “You sure don’t look this heavy.”  
Under the lamplight, Bahorel can see Jehan’s cheeks pinking up quite prettily. “Put me down.” He tried to avert his eyes, but ended up blushing fiercer than ever.  
Just then, the tramp of government-issued boots rang out on a distant roof. “No, I don’t think so.” Bahorel hastily pecked the poet on the forehead. “I’m adopting you. And the cat.” He added, as the kitten, a tabby, it turned out, poked its face out from the collar of Jehan’s ridiculous green doublet. “Now let’s get both of you inside before the cops nab us. You still owe me an explanation.”  
Thus he crossed the threshold with a poet draped over his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> The police launched a full investigation on the mystery burglar who broke into the house of the Comte de Fournier. Nothing was stolen, but it was reported that the housebreaker was caught playing the new piano in the ballroom near midnight. The police lost all tracks of the culprit at a tenement building, except for the testimony of two witnesses. One reported that a young man, supposedly an accomplice, called the burglar “Jean”, but the investigation ended there due to the alarming amounts of people named Jean in 19th century Paris.  
> (A certain inspector Javert was convinced that this “Jean” was in fact the infamous convict Jean Valjean, despite the witness’s repeated insistence that the culprit was a young man.)


End file.
